Anti- Hijab protest in IRAN
ISSUE
• started in May 2014, when Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian journalist in New York, posted old pictures of herself, clicked in Iran, where she had taken off her mandatory veil while driving.
• Soon, her Facebook page was flooded with similar pictures shared by Iranian women.
• Alinejad then created a Facebook page, “My Stealthy Freedom”, encouraging women of her country to do the same.
• A campaign, #WhiteWednesdays, bloomed, asking women to wear white on Wednesdays to protest the compulsion.
• Maryam Shariatmadari, one of the ‘Girls of Rewas arrested for protesting the mandatory
hijab practice of Iran, and sentenced to one year in prison on March 25.
• Charged under Branch 1091 of the 2nd Penal Court of Tehran for “encouraging corruption by
removing her hijab”.
• prominent human rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh told the Center for Human Rights in
Iran.
• During the Pahlavi regime (1925-1979), Mohammad Reza Shah (the last Shah), with the intention of modernising Iran, had issued a decree banning all Islamic veils.
• This not only clashed with the religious values of the majority, but its forceful implementation also outraged locals.
• Many Iranians, opposed the Pahlavis’ close relationship with Western countries and their material extravagance.
• Mullahs (clerics) denounced the Pahlavi monarchy, as they believed
that it betrayed Iran’s true ideals.
• The resistance snowballed into the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which was led by
Ayatollah Khomeini, an Iranian cleric and opponent of the Shah.
• Khomeini was exiled, and returned to the country in 1979; soon after the Islamic
Republic of Iran was born.
• Following the revolution, the new government under Khomeini introduced its own set of strict domestic laws, mainly for women.
• While acknowledging the crucial role women played in the revolution, the
Khomeini dispensation passed an edictmaking hijab compulsory for all women
in Iran.
• According to the Islamic Penal Code of Iran (1991), “women who appear in public without a proper hijab should be imprisoned from ten days to two months or pay a fine of
50,000 to 500,000 Ryal”.
• This allowed the “morality police” to harass women for any violation of the
country’s dress code.
• The anti-hijab protests that were visible in late 2017 have compelled Supreme Leader
Ali Khamenei to react to the issue.
• the protests were “the outcome of the enemy’s widespread propaganda, and
spending hefty sums in order to influence Iranian women’s attitude towards hijab.
• Recent measures introduced in Saudi Arabia, “Iranians have been… watching fondly the
developments in Saudi Arabia. For a long time, reformists… had been telling the world that Iran
was better than Saudi Arabia in terms of women’s place in society because women can at least drive.
However, with the… reforms in Saudi Arabia, the pressure to open up is also mounting on the
Iranian regime….”
View of IRAN government.
• OIL DEMAND REDUCING-INCREASE in investment—need for social reform.
• INFLUENCE ON CULTURE—globalisation—uniformity of culture
• Interference of western powers Expectations of women.
• Women rights.
• Human rights.
• Cultural freedom.
• LET THE SOCIETY DECIDE.
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